1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the fields of microbiology, immunology and virology. More particularly, it concerns compositions and methods relating to the use of reovirus-based vaccines containing modified reovirus surface proteins for the immune presentation of non-reovirus epitopes.
2. Description of Related Art
Mammalian orthoreoviruses (reoviruses) are members of the Reoviridae family of viruses. Reoviruses contain 10 double-stranded (ds) RNA gene segments enclosed in two concentric protein shells, outer capsid and core (Nibert and Schiff, 2001). These viruses serve as a versatile experimental system for studies of viral replication events at the virus-cell interface, including engagement of cell-surface receptors (Barton et al., 2001a), internalization and disassembly (Ebert et al., 2002; Ehrlich et al., 2004), and activation of the innate immune response, including NF-κB-dependent cellular signaling pathways (Connolly et al., 2000; O'Donnell et al., 2006). Reoviruses also provide a model system for studies of virus-induced apoptosis and organ-specific disease in vivo (O'Donnell et al., 2005). In addition, genetically-engineered reoviruses are excellent candidates for development of vaccines to elicit protective immunity against a wide variety of pathogens. This is a very appealing idea since reovirus undergoes primary replication in intestinal tissue with few or no symptoms in humans (Tai et al., 2005). However, at present, reovirus has been used as a vaccine platform with only limited success.